by Mehmet Rami
 
 Their first shared point, the necessity of such an agreement, is unquestionably valid. Coming six years after Israel intercepted a Turkish humanitarian aid flotilla that tried to break the naval embargo of the Gaza strip, killing ten Turkish citizens and prompting a prolonged diplomatic crisis, the deal means both nations have one less problem to deal with in an increasingly tumultuous and hostile region. This was exactly what Netanyahu was hinting at when he said in his press conference that the agreement has “strategic importance” for Israel. Sources say that increased military cooperation between the two former allies can be expected if the normalization efforts go well.
 
But what about the second shared point—the diplomatic victory part? At a first glance, both sides seem to have gotten a sweet deal: Turkey, in addition to Netanyahu’s formal apology for the flotilla attack in 2013, will receive $21m from Israel as compensation for the families of the victims. It will also be allowed to send 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and help rebuild infrastructure in the region. Israel, for its part, secured a promise that the Turkish government will prevent Hamas from carrying out military activity against Israel from its borders and have numerous court cases against Israeli soldiers and officials dropped, as well as the succulent possibility of selling its natural gas to Europe and elsewhere through Turkey.
 
But these details reveal the agreement for what it really is–a rude awakening for the rulers of both countries. Gone are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s confident proclamations that relationships with Israel will only be normalized when the country lifts its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Pro-government media in Turkey is already spinning the humanitarian aid component of the deal to claim Erdoğan got what he wanted; but Netanyahu stated -before Yıldırım was even done speaking to reporters in Ankara- that the naval blockade of Gaza was to continue. The irony of the situation becomes clearer when one looks closely at the agreement: All permitted Turkish aid to Gaza has to arrive through the painstakingly-regulated Israeli port of Ashdod–the exact harbor that the Turkish aid flotilla refused to dock at six years ago.
 
Netanyahu, for his turn, will have to endure much criticism at home for agreeing to pay the $21m, a move seen as an admission of guilt for the flotilla raid by the Israeli right. The fact that Hamas will be allowed to continue diplomatic operations in Turkey under the deal, and the little detail that Turkish President Erdoğan met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal before letting the agreement be publicly announcement, will not help Netanyahu’s case either. And even if Hamas has an actual military presence in Turkey that the deal will unofficially put an end to, repeated suicide bombings by Daesh and PKK show just how good Turkey is at keeping clandestine military activity off its borders.
 
Then why endure all of this? Why engage in such risky, unsatisfying policy reversals? Because both Turkey and Israel have reached a point of political impasse where simple realities can no longer be ignored in favor of rhetorical baravado: Turkey is utterly isolated in its region, having managed in the past years to alienate not only Israel but also Egypt, Russia, Syria, and, to a good extent, the United States. It doesn’t just need Israeli intelligence and cooperation in its struggles against Daesh and PKK–it has to reassure an increasingly skeptical world that it can be a serious, responsible player in the Middle East, not just an increasingly autocratic, unpredictable burner of bridges. The deal will also allow Erdoğan to give his domestic supporters a concrete achievement to be proud of, a rarity in Turkey these days, and regain some of the wild popularity he once had across the Arab world.
 
Israel is similarly between a rock and a hard place. The enormous amounts of natural gas it has discovered in the Mediterranean remain fairly useless without Turkey’s collaboration in its transportation. More dramatically, domestic and international -once-unthinkably, even American- opposition to its activities in occupied Palestine, and its treatment of Palestinians, is growing. There is much reason to believe that the White House has been pressuring its ally to go on with the normalization deal as well–President Obama was literally in the room, and pushed Netanyahu personally, for his famous flotilla apology phone call to then-PM Erdoğan in 2013.
 
But what about the most important party concerned in all of this–the Palestinians themselves? PM Yıldırım described the deal will allow “Our Palestinian brothers to take a breath”, and he surely has a point: Widely called “the world’s largest open-air prison”, Gaza Strip is in the midst of a severe humanitarian crisis. In addition to a 44% unemployment rate, the region faces severe drinking water and electricity shortages, and it has received less then 2 perfect of the materials it needs after the 2014 war due to the Israeli blockade. A U.N. report predicts that it will become “uninhabitable” by 2020. What Turkish humanitarian aid Israel will be allow into the region will undoubtedly help many Palestinians in dire, immediate need. And yet, an uncomfortable question, one that was unanswered in either press conference, lingers: What about the diplomatic and political sustainability of these efforts? What happens if the rampant mutual distrust between Israel and Turkey gets the better of this fragile agreement? What happens if (or “when”, really) the most adamantly right-wing government in Israel’s history arbitrarily decides that the IDF must militarily intervene in Gaza once again, bombing with characteristic gusto whatever hospitals and houses and water treatment facilities Turkey may have helped build? Or when Erdoğan is facing his next difficult election battle in three years and decides, as usual, to rally his conservative support base with a healthy dose of anti-Israel demagoguery?
 
When asked about the technical details of the efforts to rebuild infrastructure rebuilding efforts, PM Yıldırım jokingly said to the reporter: “You know more details than we do, Masha’allah.” If his answer is not exactly reassuring that is because it doesn’t have to be: The image of a somewhat rebuilt Gaza, of Palestinians achieving some vague degree of relief, is one that is useful today for the rulers of both Israel and Turkey–but the dire need to focus on the actual details and scope of such rebuilding, to create long-term sustainability of Palestinian livelihoods, and to help give Palestinians political and economic agency in all of this, those are still not realities that either country has woken up to. The deal, as Yıldırım has said, will perhaps allow Palestinians to “take a breath” for the moment; but it is really designed to be serve as a breather to Turkey and Israel.
 
Looking at the track records of Erdoğan and Netanyahu, and their respective political machineries, we should perhaps ask: Is a sustainable, reliable, truly pro-Palestinian, pro-humanitarian deal between the two countries even possible with these particular political actors?
 
Or maybe we should just keep this much-publicized “normalization” in perspective. Even as Erdoğan declared undying solidarity with the Palestinians and attacked Netanyahu with his trademark fiery rhetoric in the past six years, and as Netanyahu engaged in the nastiest instances of fear-mongering and racism in Israel, much of the business between Turkey and Israel has gone on as usual. The volume of trade between the two countries neared $6m in 2015, many times the amount when Erdoğan’s AKP first came to power. According to a number of reports, the prospects of an Israeli-Turkish natural gas trade deal were what really spurred Monday’s agreement anyways.
 
There it is, then. Business as usual. A rude awakening, perhaps—but not a complete one.